Summary of David G. Marwell's Mengele

By IRB Media

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#1 Mengele was a doctor who was assigned to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was near the center of a brave new world, and as the camp began to dismantle, he was moved to the margins. He became both the personification of the Holocaust and its most notorious author.

#2 I was assigned to the international investigation to locate Mengele and bring him before a court of law in 1985. I was part of a team of historians who worked as advocates, mining archives for evidence, interviewing individuals for elusive details, and consulting experts for context and continuity.

#3 The hunt for Josef Mengele was the most publicized case that the OSI had pursued, and it was a mixture of politics and emotion for the three countries involved. For me, it was intensely personal, as I knew no family member that Mengele had harmed.

#4 I had planned to write a book about the Mengele investigation, but as I continued to read about Mengele, I realized that I wanted to learn more about him. I decided to extend my subject beyond the investigation to an examination of the man himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822535800

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Insights on David G. Marwell's Mengele

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Mengele was a doctor who was assigned to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was near the center of a brave new world, and as the camp began to dismantle, he was moved to the margins. He became both the personification of the Holocaust and its most notorious author.

#2

I was assigned to the international investigation to locate Mengele and bring him before a court of law in 1985. I was part of a team of historians who worked as advocates, mining archives for evidence, interviewing individuals for elusive details, and consulting experts for context and continuity.

#3

The hunt for Josef Mengele was the most publicized case that the OSI had pursued, and it was a mixture of politics and emotion for the three countries involved. For me, it was intensely personal, as I knew no family member that Mengele had harmed.

#4

I had planned to write a book about the Mengele investigation, but as I continued to read about Mengele, I realized that I wanted to learn more about him. I decided to extend my subject beyond the investigation to an examination of the man himself.

#5

Mengele’s childhood home was not an unlikely incubator for the man who was to become the Angel of Death. He had a secure childhood, surrounded by parents, grandparents, and household help.

#6

Mengele’s family was conservative and Catholic, and he had no political ambitions. He joined the SS in 1935, but his membership was nominal. He performed no service and attained no rank.

#7

Mengele’s membership in the GDJ cannot be considered a direct precursor to his later Nazi Party membership and wholehearted engagement with its ideology and worldview. While he did not display any particular passion, he achieved his Abitur and earned his certificate of maturity in 1930, unsure what course of study he would eventually follow.

#8

Josef Mengele, who became known as the Angel of Death, had a friend who inspired him to choose medicine as a subject of study. He had no idea then the many-sided nature of medicine, but the flame of enthusiasm would remain warm, if not its brilliant luminosity.

#9

Adolf Hitler understood the importance of medicine, and he had specific ideas about how it should be practiced in Nazi Germany. He believed that the first responsibility of a physician was not to the individual but to the nation, or Volk.

#10

The Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 was soon reflected in the medical school curriculum and in the infrastructure of the profession. The establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics in 1927 was one of the most important events in the institutionalization of racial hygiene in Weimar Germany.

#11

Mengele was a very popular student, but he was also very isolating. He took responsibility for his isolation, and explained that it was because he did not want to overcome his inner inability to connect with others.

#12

Mengele initially